More than a third of Americans have obesity, the CDC says, running up nearly $150 billion a year in health-care costs. But for the smallest Americans, things are getting slimmer.
That’s according to a new Pediatrics study reported on by Lindsey Tanner for the Associated Press. The researchers looked at babies up to age 2 who were supported by the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food program.
The big result: While 15 percent of these kids were at risk for obesity in 2010, that fell to 12 percent in 2015. The tiniest tots had the lowest risk, at just 8 percent; toddlers were at about 15 percent. While you can’t say for certain, the newfound svelteness of the WIC infants probably owes to a number of factors, like better food (veggies, whole grains) in WIC packages and more breastfeeding.
As a whole, America is eating way better: Research from earlier this year found that the number of Americans with poor diets fell from 55.9 percent in 1999 to 45.6 percent in 2012. Fattest country in the world no longer.
